Congressman Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) is an emerging leader in the House and currently serves on the Appropriations Committee and three of its subcommittees: Foreign Operation, Commerce/Justice/State and Legislative Branch. He represents the 10th district of Illinois, located in the Northeastern suburbs of Chicago. Congressman Kirk shared his thoughts on special education, community security and Israel with Michelle Labgold, Acting Director of United Jewish Communities Washington Office.   Following are excerpts from the interview.

Labgold:  Congressman, we wanted to begin by thanking you for taking a leadership role in seeking funding for the Chicago Federations NORC (Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities) project. 

Congressman, what are your top two domestic priorities going into next year, particularly since it is an election year?

Kirk: Number one would be making sure that we continue increasing funding for special education. We have made a promise to every school district in the country that we would cover 40% of the cost of special education. But 20 years ago when that promise was made, the Congress did not fulfill its obligation.

Since I have been in office we've had a billion dollar increase for special education every year. This year we'll be at 25% of the need -- up from 4%, but still short of our promise. So making sure that we fully honor the promise and take the heat off of every school district in the country for special needs children is a number one priority.

Number two domestically is to protect the environment in the Great Lakes, like Lake Michigan, which for us is the crown jewel of our environment. We've got 25 million Americans who pull their drinking water from the Great Lakes and while a number of things are going well with regard to controlling pollution with the enactment of the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, we do have one big problem, which is a growing mercury pollution level in Lake Michigan.

It doesn't come from factories or other sources which have largely been controlled under the Clean Water Act. It comes from air pollution settling in the lake and most of this mercury and air pollution comes from one source -- coal-burning power plants. They are currently unregulated; despite what the public thinks that all smokestacks have scrubbers on them, that is not the case. While most municipalities and incinerators have pollution control technology, the coal-burning power plants don't.

So we have a big fight coming up in the Congress on the Clean Air Act. I have picked out as my special area to develop an expertise on, is how we control mercury pollution, which has a significant impact on the Great Lakes states. It's an important issue for the health and safety of 25 million Americans, but politically, it's also the home of 127 electoral votes for President and it is something of a political argument that I've been trying to use in the White House that they fully get the message that we need to take care of the problem.

Labgold:  Congressman, as you may know, Jewish institutions are facing increased security costs to protect their sites from potential terrorist attacks. In Chicago, the Jewish Federation building is one of the few buildings with barricades around it and is spending additional dollars to upgrade its security. What role do you think the federal government ought to play in helping vulnerable organizations such as ours protect themselves?

Kirk: Number one is to make sure what should be illegal is illegal. I am co-sponsor of the hate crimes legislation in the House. When I was working for the U.S. military, I saw what has been a relatively peaceful community with good relations between ethnicities torn completely apart -- plunging the country into Civil War in the mid-90's in Yugoslavia. It was a set of hate crimes that ripped that country apart by design from several hate groups.

That's why I feel like we can't be naive about certain crimes committed to stigmatize groups. I know the argument of some people that say that there is no such thing as a hate crime -- all crime is crime, but I think certain acts are meant to target and stigmatize one group. I would hope we would pass a federal hate crimes legislation.

Second thing is that, in times of terror, the federal government, which is uniquely capable of taking on international terror groups, is able to reach out to the communities that have a unique level of threat. Certainly the Jewish community is targeted by several of these terrorist organizations, not just in the United States, but also overseas. The best example of that is the recent bombing in the synagogue in Turkey; we must understand this threat and make sure that lead agencies like the FBI make a unique commitment to protect the Jewish institutions which could be the subject of an attack.

Lastly, and probably most importantly, is we don't have enough money to fortify the entire country, and even if we did, terrorists would be able to carry out some sort of attacks. We have to make sure that, in the long run, we do not fear terrorists, but that the terrorists fear us. We need a very aggressive law enforcement effort with regards to domestic terror cells that we have in this country and take aggressive action against them and especially dry up their foreign contact and links to money.

Labgold: Congressman, you have a reputation as an outspoken supporter of Israel and traveled there just this summer with the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago. What are your thoughts on the current situation in the region?

Kirk: I hope that every Congressman with a strong Jewish community follows our example and travels to Israel, not as part of a congressional delegation, but does what we do and builds a delegation around their representative in Congress and goes as a group from the local community. It was so much more powerful to have leaders from my own congressional district with me as we experienced what was going on.

It's a vital thing -- it's something that I am going to do every other year, but I would hope that we are setting a new example for other members of Congress concerned about peace in the Middle East, to not just to go as a group of Congressmen, but to take their own constituents with them, to deepen the commitment.

As far as the situation over there is concerned, we had a very emotional time there because when we departed the United States, the road map was still alive and by the time that we checked into our hotel in Tel Aviv, the Jerusalem bus bomb had gone off. So a trip which began in its planning to be a series of discussions with various parties to the road map, instead became visiting intensive care wards of hospitals where we met people like Esther Zarega, age 8, who had been in the Jerusalem bus bomb and was in a coma clinging to life.

She eventually recovered and regained consciousness only to learn that she no longer had a sister. To be sitting there in an intensive care unit with an 8-year-old, a profound anger comes over you to think of what political cause could possibly lead someone to try to kill an 8-year-old girl. But we're professionals and we want to make sure that our anger is channeled the right way.

When I look at the situation right now, you think that given the disappointing record of Yasser Arafat in turning away from President Clinton's offer at Camp David and launching the second intifada and the grip that he still has on the Palestinian Authority and the commitment that he still has to terrorism. There have been a number of people criticizing the fence. I have been taking a different view that the fence in the Gaza Strip seems to have led to a practical reduction in the level of violence across the border. If the fence in other places leads to lives saved, I think that begins to establish a more calm environment whereby the peace process can renew.

Labgold: Congressman, we appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts with us.

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